Joseph Lewis - Wren the Fox Witch

Wren ran across the courtyard and climbed up on the rubble of the tower, scrambling over the cracked stones and charred beams, until she reached what had once been the central stair that had spiraled up to the balcony and down into the cellar. Now, all she could see were ragged slabs of rock covered in gray dust. She knelt down and placed her hands on the stones, and with a few gentle swirls of her soul, she dragged a few fragile threads of aether back and forth through the earth beneath her, searching for a tug, for a sensation of resistance. Searching for a soul.

Wren opened her eyes. “She’s down there.”

Tycho nodded. “Can you use your power to lift the stones?”

She shook her head as she reached down and picked up a small rock, and tossed it away. “Aether can only touch the spirit, not the flesh, and definitely not a stone.”

She threw aside another rock, and another. Tycho and the four guards climbed up beside her, and they all began tossing the bits of debris away from the tower stairs.

After a quarter hour, they had managed to throw, carry, or push aside most of the rubble covering the entrance to the cellar and found the way down blocked by one last block of masonry, a large section of wall that had not broken and now stood at a slight angle in the stairwell itself, leaving gaps that only a mouse could get through.

The six diggers sat down to rest.

“You know,” said Tycho. “The floor under us still solid, so the ceiling over Yaga’s head is probably still intact as well. She’s trapped for the moment, but she may not be hurt at all.”

Wren nodded. The thought had occurred to her as well, but there was no way to know for certain and she didn’t want to guess or assume. She wanted to know. She knelt by one of the gaps around the fallen wall and called down, “Yaga! Hello? Can you hear me? It’s Wren!”

There was no answer.

“Look for tools,” Tycho said to his men. “Hammers, shovels, anything. Maybe we can break up this wall, or pull it out of the way somehow.”

The guards nodded and wandered off in separate directions.

Wren sat down by the top of the stair to wait, and Tycho sat beside her. After a moment he said, “What you did before in the cistern, to save the Duchess, to save all of us, that was… the most amazing thing I have ever seen in my life.”

She wanted to smile. She wanted to enjoy that moment, but she was too tired and worried and distracted.

What happened to Yaga? Where is everyone else? What am I supposed to do next?

Wren reached over and took his hand. “Thanks.”

Boots thumped and crunched across the gravel courtyard behind them, approaching at a quick step, and Wren turned, hoping to see one of the guards returning with some remarkable device for clearing huge walls but instead she something more familiar. “Omar?”

The Aegyptian’s face was paler than usual and his eyes were a bit narrower, and his lips a bit thinner. But he strode along quite quickly and came to stand at the bottom of the rubble, and looked up at her. “I thought I might find you here. But I didn’t think the damage would be this bad. At least, I’d hoped the palace would be spared, somehow.” He looked ill.

Wren stood up. “Are you all right?”

Omar shrugged and glanced away, squinting at the quietly burning ruins all around them.

“Vlad?” Tycho asked. “Koschei?”

“Vlad is fine. So is his brother.” Omar hesitated. “Koschei is dead.”

Wren swallowed.

Koschei is dead?

She pointed to the broken wall behind her. “Yaga is trapped in here. The men are looking for tools to get her out.”

Omar grimaced and climbed up the rubble to stand beside her. “Move back,” he said softly as he drew his seireiken. The sword’s blinding light swept over the destruction, painting the near sides of the stones white and the shadowed sides black. And then Omar slammed the tip of the sword into a fine crack in the broken wall, and a small chunk broke away. He struck the wall again, and another piece fell. Bit by bit, he chipped away at the stone until the pieces were small enough for them to lift, and they cleared the entrance to the stair in silence.

Down in the cellar the only light came from Omar’s sword and it revealed that while the ceiling had remained intact, one of the walls had toppled into the room, dropping several large stone blocks onto the legs of the white-haired woman stretched out on the pile of carpets in the center of the space.

As Omar moved to deal with the stones, Wren knelt beside the woman’s head, gently stroking her silvery hair back from her wrinkled face. “Yaga? Can you hear me? We’ve come to take you out of here. And there’s someone else here. Omar. I mean, Grigori. Grigori is here, too.”

Yaga sighed and her eyes opened halfway. “Grigori?”

Omar continued clearing the rocks. “I’m here.”

But the old woman didn’t look at him. She looked up at Wren and said, “I’m tired, little sister.”

“I know. You still need more sleep.”

“No, not that.” Yaga shook her head. “I’m tired of all this. I don’t want to be here anymore. I want to slip away into the quiet places, the dark places, and sleep forever.”

Wren glanced at Tycho and Omar, who could only give her sympathetic looks in reply. Wren said, “I don’t know what that means.”

“It means I’m ready to die now, you silly girl.” Yaga stared up at the ceiling through lidded, unfocused eyes.

“What about your son, Koschei?” Wren asked.

Do I tell her that he’s already dead? He was her entire world yesterday, but now, everything has changed.

Omar paused in his work and glanced at them.

“He’s a grown man,” Yaga whispered. “And I’m a grown woman. And this is my life, and my choice. I want to die now, please.”

Wren leaned back and looked at Omar again. “What should I do?”

He took half a step back, his face lined with age and worry in the harsh light of the seireiken. “Do whatever you think is right. Stop asking me. She’s talking to you, not me.”

Useless.

Wren looked down at Yaga again. “All right.”

Yaga pulled the necklace from inside her dress and pressed the little golden heart into Wren’s hand. “Take it.”

Wren looked at the sun-steel pendant. “I can’t destroy this. I can’t release your soul. We’ll need Omar’s sword. Your soul can rest in the seireiken.”

Yaga grimaced. “Is there no other place? Your ring, perhaps?”

Wren glanced down at the golden band of Denveller and she thought of the eight valas already in there, and what it might be like to have Baba Yaga among them.

“My ring? Not one of your bracelets?”

Yaga laid one of her thin hands on Wren’s arm, and she smiled. “Your ring.”

Wren nodded. “All right.”

The last time someone gave her soul to this ring, she bit off the end of her own tongue and smashed her bloody face on it.

She held out her hand with the ring toward the old witch. “Right now?”

“Right now.”

Omar pushed aside the last of the stones and gently moved Yaga’s broken legs up closer to where she was sitting. The old Rus woman winced and pressed her hand to her foot for a moment, and then exhaled and opened her eyes. “It’s fine now. Thank you, Grigori.” And she turned her back to him.

“Well, I guess I’ll just need a small cut, a little blood,” said Wren.

“Don’t be squeamish, child.” Yaga took one of the small bird skulls dangling from her necklace and ripped its beak across her open palm, releasing a small red sea into the center of her hand. “Quickly!”

Wren shivered as Yaga reached out and wrapped her bloody hand around Wren’s fingers, and the ring of Denveller. As the blood faded into the golden ring, the old woman’s face went gray and slack and she fell over on her blankets, dead. Wren looked from the body to the ring on her finger and back again.